Language of Love

I love those times when even though you know that you will never fully grasp how badly you fail as a parent every day, you can see the hand of God working in and through your children...despite your own shortcomings and failures. I had one of those moments this evening with Antonio, Willy, and Sammy.

A co-worker of Will's became a father a couple of weeks ago. His little boy, C.J., was born prematurely and has so far spent every moment in this world in the hospital. The poor little thing had a brain hemorrhage but seems to be slowly recovering.
Ever since the boys heard about it, they pray for baby C.J. by name each night before bed. Well, tonight Sammy prayed for baby C.J. too. Antonio spent his free time at school today making him a card, and drawing and cutting out little pictures of cars that he so carefully drew. Whether or not C.J. knows it, that little baby is loved and is lifted up to God faithfully by three other little children that have never even laid eyes on him before. It's just the most beautiful thing to me because I know they didn't learn this kind of love from me, and now I can see why the heart of a child is so precious in God's sight. They're speaking God's language!

Mitchel and I were having a conversation the other day about how it is that in every country, all throughout history, people have known there is a God. Perhaps they didn't know Who this God really is, but they knew there is one nonetheless. Mitchel mentioned "the empty space in us that can only be filled with God," and then we got to talking about Helen Keller. As an infant, she fell sick and became both blind and deaf, yet when a dedicated teacher worked with her and eventually taught her to communicate, she later revealed in one of her letters that she'd always known about God. Before she could interpret language...not hearing...or seeing. Even before she knew He was "God", she knew He was there.
This makes me wonder if baby C.J. can feel God's presence with him, and we're praying that he does. I know we tend to think of infants as if they're not fully aware or cognitively mature people, but I wonder about that.

I watched a video from a woman who couldn't communicate in our language, but said " I am in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment. Far from being purposeless, the way that I move is an ongoing response to what is around me. Ironically, the way that I move, when responding to everything around me, is described as being 'in a world of my own.' Whereas if I interact with a much more limited set of responses and only react to a much more limited part of my surroundings, people claim that I am 'opening up to true interaction with the world'. They judge my existence, awareness, and personhood on which of a tiny and limited part of the world I appear to be reacting to. The way I naturally think and respond to things looks and feels so different from standard concepts or even visualization, that some people do not consider it thought at all, but it is a way of thinking in its own right. However the thinking of people like me is only taken seriously if we learn your language....it is only when I type something in your language that you refer to me as having communication. I smell things. I listen to things. I feel things. I taste things. I look at things. It is not enough to look and listen and taste and smell and feel. I have to do those to the right things...and fail to do them to the wrong things, or else people doubt that I am a thinking being, and since their definition of thought defines their definition of personhood so ridiculously much, they doubt that I am a real person as well....I find it very interesting, by the way, that failure to learn your language is seen as a deficit, but failure to learn my language is seen as so natural....We are even viewed as non-communicative if we don't speak the standard language, but other people are not considered non-communicative if they are so oblivious to our own languages as to believe they don't exist....It is meant as a strong statement on the existence and value of many different kinds of thinking and interaction in a world where how close you can appear to a specific one of them determines whether you are seen as a real person, or an adult, or an intelligent person."
I wonder how much infants know about their surroundings but just don't communicate in our language. Yet, God is not limited as we are. I imagine He does communicate with the "non-communicative" just like He did with Helen Keller.
The things we don't know we don't know...

My mom and Guy came over for coffee earlier and Guy and I got into a conversation about Revelation. He's been studying hard. I gave him a book to read that goes into it in depth, and he has just finished reading about the 7 churches. To me this is a good sign. I'm praying for his salvation if he's not yet saved. He may already be. My mom has been telling me how he never stops talking about it, and people at his work are starting to tell him he's crazy. One of the first things that happened to me after I got saved was an obsession with eschatology...but of course, it didn't stop there. It was actually a Kay Arthur study of the book of John (how fitting that God would use a woman to save me), then the epistles, then the end times, to be exact.
We'll have to wait and see, but I just keep thinking...the word of God never comes back void (as the prelude to day 1's homework this week pointed out).
Which reminds me...
I decided to steal an idea from day 2's homework. Because we seem to have a real issue with worry in this house, I'm going to take the idea of listing all our worries under the big label TRUST, posting it on the fridge where we all can add to it, and then we all be deliberate and earnest about seeking Him and His Kingdom. I think it'll really help us around here to glorify God better. I guess we just don't realize how sinful worrying is. We see it as something that's "not good", but not sinful. You hardly ever hear people talking about repenting for their worrying, but that's what we need to do here. How can we think so little of the God Who's done so much for us? [sigh]